tool

Google Trends

created 2026-06-07 google-trends · seo · demand · idea-pipeline · pytrends · glimpse

Google Trends

Google’s free interest-over-time tool. Used in the mini-apps/overview|mini-apps series not as a product to sell, but as the raw data layer for the demand-radar|demand radar — the weekly idea pipeline that surfaces rising tool-intent queries.

GivesDoesn’t give
Relative interest over time (0–100 scaled per chart)Absolute search volume
Geo and category breakdownsRevenue or willingness-to-pay
Rising vs Top related queriesReal-time API on a stable contract (alpha-gated as of mid-2026)
Filter by web/news/images/YouTube/shoppingAnything pre-2004 (data starts then)

The relative-not-absolute thing is the biggest trap. A query at “100” on a country chart could be 10 searches/month or 10M. Always cross-check with a volume estimator before committing.

Data access landscape (mid-2026)

SourceStatusUse
Official Trends APIAlpha, gated invite-only, public release ~a year outApply for alpha now — real moat if accepted before public launch
pytrends (Python lib)Unofficial scraper; rate-limited + CAPTCHA-proneFine for one-off pulls; unreliable for cron jobs
Apify (google-trends-scraper)Paid scraping API, free tierFirst-line option for the radar’s automated layer
SerpApi (google_trends)Paid, $50/mo entry, reliableSame role as Apify; pick whichever has better category granularity at sign-up
GlimpseBrowser extension + paid APIOverlays absolute volume on the Trends UI — the missing piece

The pragmatic stack for demand-radar:

  1. Start with manual weekly export + Apify free tier for the cron
  2. Apply for the Trends API alpha (slow queue; small form)
  3. Use Glimpse for volume cross-checks before committing a weekend

Volume cross-check tools

Trends tells you “growing” but not “big enough.” Cross-checks before you build:

ToolWhat it givesCost
Google Keyword PlannerVolume bracket per keyword (e.g., 1k–10k/mo)Free, requires Google Ads account
Ahrefs free tierExact monthly volume estimateFree tier exists; paid is $99/mo
Semrush free tierExact monthly volume + difficultyFree tier exists; paid is $129/mo
GlimpseAbsolute volume overlaid on TrendsFree chrome extension; paid API for automation

Threshold for the radar: ≥ 1k/mo searches in target market before it’s worth a weekend. Below that, even perfect conversion doesn’t earn enough.

Rising vs Top queries

Each Trends search returns two related-queries lists:

  • Top — historically high interest in the chart’s time window. Mostly the obvious incumbents.
  • Rising — fastest growth in the time window. This is what the radar scrapes.

A “rising” query labeled “Breakout” has grown >5000% — almost always a spike worth investigating (could be noise, could be the next category).

Categories worth filtering by

For the radar’s tool-intent lane, the highest signal-to-noise categories:

CategoryWhy
Computers & ElectronicsDev tools, file converters, API tools
FinanceCalculators (tax, mortgage, severance), generators (invoices, contracts)
Business & IndustrialSpreadsheet helpers, templates, niche utilities
Internet & TelecomNetwork tools, DNS lookups, “X to Y” converters

Skip: Arts & Entertainment (content demand, not tool demand), News (3-day spikes), Shopping (commerce, not tools).

Geos worth covering

For kulify specifically:

  • US — biggest absolute volume, most competition
  • EU (DE, FR, NL) — second-tier volume, less competition, English mostly works
  • HR — kula’s language, nearly undefended for tool queries (real moat); the demand-radar explicitly weights HR-language rising tool queries higher

Honest assessment

Google Trends data is directional at best:

  • The relative scaling hides 99% of the signal
  • The scraping ecosystem is rate-limited and brittle
  • A “rising” query can be a one-week spike, a Pinterest meme, or a real category opening — only the cross-check + the modifier filter + the duration-of-growth score tells you which
  • The official API gating is a deliberate moat by Google — until it opens, paid scrapers are the only durable option

The win is filtering, not “prediction.” Trends + the radar’s regex layer + volume cross-check gets you from ~1M rising queries/week worldwide to ~10 candidates worth thinking about. That’s enough.

Where this fits in kulify